


Lead Me Back to You

by belasteals



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Fluff, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 08:27:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7525564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belasteals/pseuds/belasteals
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was her pack, and she was coming home.</p><p>(Prompt fill: Arya and Gendry reunite upon her return to Westeros)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lead Me Back to You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Abi117](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abi117/gifts).



_The wolf circled the wall of broken stones, her great paws silent in the growing snow. There was food inside, and she was hungry. Hunting was poor in the winter, even in this land of rivers far from her home. She could smell men inside. Her little cousins rarely hunted the men who wore metal pelts and carried long steel claws, but Nymeria was not afraid. It had been days since her pack had eaten, and she was so hungry._

_Her girl didn’t like when she ate man-flesh. It made her girl feel ill when she ran with Nymeria and tasted man-flesh on her tongue. Her girl had stopped her from eating a pup once, and hadn’t run with her for a quarter-moon afterwards. Nymeria didn’t understand. It was winter, and men were the only food to be had for miles and miles. Her pack was starving._

_A shape stepped out of the stone building –_ inn, _said the part of her that was her girl_ – _and Nymeria stopped her circling, focusing intently. It was one of the men with metal pelts, a broad man who stood taller than her head. Not many men were taller than she was, now. She watched the man go towards one of the smaller buildings, the one that smelled of fire and steel. He would be hard hunting, but he would feed her, and some of her little cousins as well. She was so hungry._

 _The wind changed, blowing the man’s scent towards her, and Nymeria breathed it in deeply. She meant to take a step forward, but the part of her that was her girl was awakening._ Pack, _it whispered. Nymeria didn’t understand. Her little cousins were her pack, and her lost brothers and sister._ Not food, _came the whisper._ Pack. _She whined. Her girl was not running with her tonight, but the part of her that was her girl was stronger each time she did._

Pack. _Nymeria snorted in frustration. She turned away and loped back into the woods, abandoning her hunt._

_A long way away, her girl woke with a start._

~ ~ ~

The bitter wind stung at her face and left salt spray in her hair as Arya stood at the bow of the ship, squinting towards the mainland. Her grip tightened around Needle’s pommel, the leather-wrapped handle a reassuring weight in her hand.

“We’ll be at Saltpans by nightfall,” a crew member informed her in Braavosi, and Arya forced herself to turn and smile at him. “Have you ever been to Westeros?” He asked.

“A long time ago,” she answered absently in the same tongue.

Saltpans. It was the proper place for a homecoming, she supposed – the harbor she had used to leave Westeros all those years ago was the same one she would use to return.

 _Who are you? No one._ Arya felt herself brace for the sharp sting of wood against her cheek, but the blow did not come. _Who are you? No one._ They would catch her. She knew it. _Who are you?_

_A dead girl on a fool’s mission._

In truth, she wasn’t sure what had driven her to retrieve Needle from its hiding place in the steps and flee into the night, only that she had awoken one morning with the knowledge that she must return to her pack. _The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives._ A girl knew nothing of pack; pack belonged to Arya Stark, and Arya Stark was supposed to be dead. But Arya Stark was on a Braavosi ship that would dock at Saltpans by nightfall, and then…

And then. She could hardly _stay_ in Saltpans. Pack was not in Saltpans, and there were too many people in and out of a port city, even as the days grew shorter and colder. There were too many chances for someone – for one of _them_ – to find her. She could not go home to Winterfell, and she would certainly never make it far enough North to reach Jon at the wall, not now that winter had come. Sansa was missing, said the whispers in the streets of Braavos, and her brothers were dead.

 _What pack am I returning to?_ She thought bitterly. A dead girl with no family, no pack, and nowhere to go after Saltpans.

Arya Stark sighed and turned her back on the salt spray.

~ ~ ~

She should have known she would end up at that thrice-damned inn. She had been here with her father and the king’s retinue once, before she had driven Nymeria away a lifetime ago, and again with the Hound before Braavos. _Nothing good happens at the Inn at the Crossroads,_ she thought darkly, but the short daylight hours had given way to a bitter night and the shelter was worth it, if not the food.

Her horse stumbled slightly and Arya cursed, dismounting into the snow. A quick examination revealed a thrown shoe, and made the decision for her.

The inn looked nearly the same as she crossed through the wall of broken white stones and stabled her horse. Arya opened the door, pausing for a moment as the noise and smell of food hit her, until a man seated near the entrance looked up at the gust of cold air and snarled, “close the door, will ya?”

Inside, she could see the damages of war more closely. The first time she had been here, as a child, it was full to bursting with men and run by a woman with a red smile; the second time it had been quieter, and the innkeep was a man. Neither was here now, and the common room was nearly empty, save for a sparse handful of armed men. Arya caught a glimpse of a child, no older than six, peering out at her from the kitchen with wide eyes.

A girl near Arya’s age passed a tankard to the man by the door before looking up to eye her suspiciously.

“I’d like a hot meal and a room for the night,” Arya said awkwardly.

“Rooms are expensive,” the girl warned shortly. “Are you alone?”

An older, mousy woman emerged from the kitchen, placing a warning hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I apologize for my sister,” she said quietly. “Welcome.”

“We’re all wary of strangers these days,” Arya replied, but didn’t remove her hand from Needle under her cloak. “I can pay for the night, and be on my way in the morning.”

The woman nodded. “Have Janna and Alyx prepare a room,” she told the angry girl, and turned back to Arya to negotiate payment. The meal lightened her purse more than she would have liked, and the room even more so, but Arya had little choice but to accept. She could go nowhere else in the middle of the night, and she was loath to ride a horse with a thrown shoe through the snowy drifts and icy patches of the road.

“Is there a forge nearby?” she asked the mousy woman – Jeyne, she had introduced herself, and her angry sister Willow.

“There’s one here, and a smith as well,” Jeyne told her. “You can see him in the morning before you leave, if you like.” Arya stopped herself from frowning. The forge hadn’t been working the last time she had been here, and no proper smith would be working at an empty inn during times of war when high lords needed arms and armor, except… except…

 _Pack,_ said a tiny voice in the back of her mind. Arya tried unsuccessfully to banish it.

Gods, she had _known_ a bloody stupid idiot smith who would rather work at an empty inn than for a high lord, but he was with the Brotherhood and he was probably dead and eaten by wolves and he didn’t want to be her pack and-

“I’d like to see him now, if I may,” she said against her will.

Mousy Jeyne looked uncertain. “He doesn’t like much to be disturbed at night-” she began, but she must have seen either the stubbornness or the conflict on Arya’s face, because she changed her mind halfway through the sentence. “Around back. You’ll see the lights from the fires, it’s the only other building that hasn’t been abandoned.”

“Thank you,” she said numbly.

She let her feet carry her out the door, around the building, towards the short outbuilding glowing lightly from the fires of the forge. She reached out to touch the handle, and a wolf’s distant howl split the night air, and she _knew._

~ ~ ~

There was a ghost in his forge.

He had felt the cold wind hit his back as the door opened, and had turned to snarl at whoever had come to disturb him to close the door before it killed the fires, and _R’hllor save him,_ there was a ghost in his forge.

She was a head taller than when he had last seen her. Her hair was longer and thicker, her cheeks fuller, and she certainly could no longer pass for a boy, but there was no mistaking the long face, the grey eyes, the slender blade at her belt. He put down the breastplate he had been holding with trembling fingers. The only sounds were the crackling of the fires and their own unsteady breaths.

“You’re not Jeyne,” he said stupidly.

“You’re not dead,” Arya replied, sounding every bit as shocked to the core as him.

“I thought…” Gendry took a shaky step forward, then another. He reached out, slowly, and placed his hand on her cheek, leaving a streak of soot under his fingertips. “God, you’re really here.” It had been _years_ , four or five, since she had disappeared into the night, and never once in that time had he imagined he would truly see her again. Her lip was trembling, and he was distantly aware of a wetness on his cheeks. “You came back.”

The first tear slid down her cheek. “I came back,” she whispered. “I came back for my pack,” and he had never truly understood her idea of pack, but his heart was swelling and they were so close, and-

Gendry didn’t know which of them bridged the gap first, but his lips were on hers, his hand still resting against her cheek as hers splayed across his back. He could taste salt – from his tears or hers, he couldn’t tell, but probably both – and smoke and winter and _Arya_. It was the sloppy kiss of two people lonely and unpracticed and desperate. Her lips, chapped from the winter air, chased his as he pulled away too soon. He opened his eyes reluctantly, and suddenly realized what he had done.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have, I-” he stammered. He tried to step back, but Arya’s arms were still tight around his torso. “That wasn’t right of me-”

“Stupid,” she whispered, “stupid, stupid, stupid,” and kissed him again. His heart hammered unsteadily in his chest, and _she wasn’t dead, she was here and real and alive and kissing him_. The second kiss lasted longer, until Arya pulled away for want of air.

God, hadn’t he dreamed of this? All those years when he thought she was dead, and he dreamed of kissing a girl with grey eyes and short hair, but she had been a child – they had both been children – and she was grown now, a woman he had been half in love with without seeing her for so long, and she was _here._

“Where were you?” he asked quietly.

“Braavos. Where were you?”

“Here, serving the Brotherhood.” The Brotherhood – she didn’t know, not about Mother Mercy. “Arya, there’s so much”

“Shh.” She rested her head against his chest and he leaned into the embrace, his chin coming to rest on the top of his head. “Later. We’ll talk about it all later,” she said into his tunic.

“Later,” he agreed, and tilted her chin up to kiss her again.

In the distance, a wolf howled.


End file.
